If you hang out here very often, you know that I love short stories. I think there is a real art to telling a story in just a few pages. In Lucky Alan: And Other Stories, Jonathan Lethem succeeds in a few stories – one or two stories stayed with me – but most left no impression. My favorite story by far… Read more
Oh, I can’t tell you how excited I was to get a copy of Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances for review! My love affair with Neil Gaiman’s writing has been a troubled one – some things I love, some things I don’t – but I love short stories when they are well-written and this collection was a treasure. That doesn’t… Read more
Man V. Nature: Storiesby Diane Cook is a fascinating book of short stories – the kind that keep you thinking long after you finish reading. The stories present impossible situations — truly impossible situations that you can’t imagine happening in real life. In “The Not-Needed Forest, a 10 year old boy is told he is “not needed” and is sent… Read more
Flings: Stories by Justin Taylor, a book of short stories, is interesting, but ultimately unsatisfying. The blurb on the back names Taylor “A master of the modern snapshot” and they might well be right. The book is like a stack of Polaroids, taken by strangers and with no context to explain them. (Think Awkward Family Photos.) They are fascinating, funny,… Read more
Folks, it pays to troll the Daily Deals and links on Amazon’s Kindle pages. That’s where I picked up Rage Against the Night, edited by Shane Jiraiya Cummings, with stories by all your favorites — Stephen King, Ramsey Cambell, Peter Straub, and more. The book is a fund-raiser for Rocky Wood, author, president of the Horror Writers Association and an expert on… Read more
Four Summoner’s Tales starts with an interesting premise. If you could truly raise people from the dead, of course, there would be people willing to pay you to do it, to bring their loved ones back. But wouldn’t there also be people willing to pay you not to do it? Could you blackmail that trophy wife, whose 90-year-old husband just left… Read more
“The universe is not made up of atoms; it’s made up of tiny stories.” It’s a great beginning to a very tiny book. The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 by hitRECord and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Actually, the great beginning was the end paper. It’s full of tiny drawings and all the detail and work that went into it are just… Read more
I was very excited to receive this collection of stories. This is the third Ellen Datlow collection I’ve read, the second that I’ve reviewed, and I think she does a great job of choosing really interesting stories that all play to a theme. Blood and Other Cravings isn’t your typical book about vampires. These aren’t necessarily creatures that suck your… Read more
This story comes at a perfect time. As I posted earlier today, my current book is Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy, full of stories about fae and other wildfolk, most of them taking place in urban environments. In the Dunes, a story/novella by John Leahy, runs along similar lines. Two good friends, on a golfing vacation in Ireland, find… Read more
Forgetting English is a slim volume of haunting short stories. These are stories of loss, of deep emotion, and of women trying to find their way forward. The language is lyrical — poetic in places — and the stories were lovely to read. Author Midge Raymond provides a very short but entertaining collection. “The lanterns bob gently as they drift… Read more